


Quiet & Safe

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: BDSM, Established Relationship, Flogging, M/M, Miscommunication, Relationship Issues, Safe Sane and Consensual, Tension, Trust, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 14:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eliot gets too twisted up inside, Nate is the only one he trusts to set things right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet & Safe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jesco0307](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesco0307/gifts).



> Written for Jesco0307 as part of the 2013 Leverage Exchange

Forty minutes and thirty-two seconds. That was how long Eliot had been out of touch when all was said and done, and how long it took for Nate to come entirely unraveled.

The job had been a bad idea from the word go and Nate and Eliot had ended up taking the worst of it. They were so badly out of step with each other that every disagreement they had over how best to proceed had escalated into a full-blown argument and inevitably finished with Nate pulling rank. About the time Sophie was only semi-seriously suggesting putting the two of them in time out, Hardison had noticed a disturbance on the far side of the warehouse they’d been searching.

“I’m on it,” Eliot had said. He was striding off before Nate had a chance to say anything in response.

“So much for not letting your personal problems interfere with the work,” Sophie snarked, once the two of them were alone again.

A little over a minute later, Hardison reported that Eliot’s comm had gone off line. “Find him,” were the only words Nate said in the ensuing forty minutes and thirty-two seconds, the sudden hard edge in his voice making it absolutely clear to all of them (not that it was ever in question) that failure was not an option.

They worked fast. Even though Nate knew in the back of his thoughts that Eliot wouldn’t have approved, they split up – Nate and Sophie each taking one half of the building to search, while Parker moved soundlessly through the rafters and Hardison worked his magic on every piece of tech within reach.

 _Nothing…_ And the longer they went without anything to show for their efforts, the heavier Nate’s heart grew. Something about this job, this mark, had triggered Eliot in a very deep and very bad way, but being Eliot he’d refused to talk about it. Being Nate, he’d resented being shut out by the one person in his life who was supposed to be able to trust him without question and turned those feelings into petty little jabs and asides, which quickly grew to heated words he was coming to realize with each passing tick of the clock he might never be able to take back now.

 _What if this is it?_ What if this was the moment where everything changed, where he lost the ability to make it right?  
The fact that it turned out not to be _that_ moment wasn’t enough to stop Nate from going half-mad with fear by the time Hardison caught a glimpse of something on a security camera pointed at a nearby loading dock that turned out to be their missing hitter. He’d been cornered by six of what the mark considered “personal security”, and while he’d given as good as he’d taken, what he’d taken had been enough to knock him out for a while.

“We should get you to a hospital,” Sophie insisted.

Eliot shook his head, eyes searching out Nate who’d gone to his knees at his hitter’s side. “I’ll be fine, Soph. Don’t fuss.” He reached out and wrapped his hand around the fist Nate had clenched tight against his thigh. After a moment something seemed to ease in Nate’s heart; he relaxed and turned his hand so that their palms were pressed together.

 _I’m sorry._ He could read Eliot’s apology in his eyes as easily as if the hitter had spoken the words aloud. He nodded slightly, mouthing the words, “Me too.”

Nothing was said about the comm going off-line as they made their way back to the van and headed home for the night.  
************************  
“Nate, maybe you should just give him some space tonight.” The hitter managed to hold it together long enough to make dinner for everyone and pick at his own food, but as soon as he could reasonably make his retreat, he’d fled up the stairs to Nate’s apartment.

Nate watched him go, a slow, crawling dread creeping through his stomach. “He doesn’t want space,” he said finally, turning back to face Sophie. “If he did, he would have gone home.”

“You’re not a bloody psychiatrist!” she admonished, clearly not comfortable with what she suspected was going to happen between mastermind and hitter once they were alone together. “You need to stop playing like you are before somebody really gets hurt!”

“This _is_ what he needs from me, Sophie.” The magnitude of what his hitter had entrusted him with swelled in his heart again, momentarily staggering him. “And believe me when I say that the psychology behind it is very, very sound.” He’d read everything he could get his hands on since agreeing to walk this road with Eliot, and that was one thing he would stake his soul on. As strange as this part of their relationship might seem to outsiders, Eliot drew a great deal of comfort from the idea that Nate could and would keep him from losing control. And Nate drew his own comfort from the fact that he would sooner die than betray Eliot’s trust about this.

Not wanting to delay things any longer than necessary, Nate said his good nights and headed upstairs. As he walked, he slowed his breathing and began to clear his mind – finding that place in his soul where he could be the one in charge, where he could say what needed to be said, and be what Eliot needed him to be.

The sight that met him when he finally entered his bedroom wasn’t encouraging with regards to his hitter’s mindset. Eliot had stripped out of the clothes he’d been wearing, donning his favorite pair of sweatpants in their place. That wasn’t the problem, nor was the fact that he’d already buckled the heavy leather cuffs around his wrist. The problem was that he’d already clipped the cuffs to the chain that hung down from the eyebolt in the ceiling.

“Eyes front,” he snapped as Eliot started to turn towards him. He put just enough of a growl into his voice for his partner to understand that he wasn’t happy about something; the hitter shuddered in surprise, but did as he was told.

 _Dammit,_ Nate swore silently as he caught sight of Eliot’s right hand in the lamplight. The decision to go ahead and bind himself so completely instead of waiting for Nate had been an impulsive one, and like most of the decisions Eliot made when he got like this it had been poorly executed, with no regard for his own well-being at all.

“Eyes front,” he repeated, catching a slight turn of Eliot’s head as he reached up to test the skin. His heart sank as he realized the hitter’s right hand was already going cold from the cuff having been buckled too tight. “You know better than to string yourself up like this when I’m not around,” he chided, jerking the buckle loose and easing the strap by two holes. “How does that feel?”

Eliot drew a deep, shuddering breath and dutifully flexed his wrist. “Better,” he admitted. Nate slipped two fingers between the cuff and Eliot’s skin, testing the fit for himself. Satisfied, he stepped back and faced the younger man.

“Are you going to need the blindfold, or do you think you can behave without it?”

Like everything that passed between them at times like this, the substance of the answer wasn’t the only thing Nate was concerned with. _How_ Eliot went about the process of responding would tell the mastermind volumes about what they were going to be dealing with when they dug into the meat of what was going on.

Seconds passed as Eliot struggled to come up with an honest answer, instead of the one he thought Nate wanted to hear. His gaze was shifting constantly during that time, looking everywhere but Nate’s eyes, so the mastermind wasn’t surprised when he finally blew out a sharp breath and said, “Blindfold. Please.”

Nodding, Nate went to the drawer where he kept all the things he might need during one of these sessions and took out a length of soft, black cloth. “I handled today badly,” he said, turning back to face Eliot. “Before we start anything tonight, you need to know how sorry I am.” Blue eyes widened in surprise, but Nate pressed on before Eliot could say anything that might cause him to lose his nerve. “I should have listened more instead of being pissed that you wouldn’t just tell me what was going on in your head.”

“Nate…” Eliot began, but the mastermind shook his head.

“Nope – you know the rules. The second you go into those cuffs, it’s my turn to talk.” Feeling steadier, Nate went to his hitter and began tying the blindfold in place. “You’ll have your chance to say whatever it is you need to say,” he continued. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need…I’ve got you.”

Eliot shuddered; Nate could sense the emotions he was struggling to hold in check. “You have permission to let go,” he said quietly, taking two steps back. “This is your safe space – nothing you do or say here tonight has the power to hurt anyone. _You_ won’t hurt anyone. I won’t let you.”

He waited until Eliot grew quiet again before asking, “Do you understand?”

Eliot nodded mutely.

What Eliot only half-jokingly referred to as “the interrogation phase” came next. Nate had grown painfully aware during their time together that in trying to satisfy this side of himself Eliot had taken up with men over the years more interested in abusing him for their own pleasures than in worrying about what he needed from these encounters. He had been stunned the first time Nate had refused to punish him for something.

“If I have any doubts about myself or my reasons for entering into a scene with you, I’m not going to do it.” He had refused to budge on that point, reasoning that as the dominant one it was his duty to make the responsible choices for both of them in this area of their lives together.

As a result, he’d insisted on certain steps in their lead-up to any of their encounters. One was reminding the hitter that whatever happened in this room he was safe. Another step was questions – as few or as many as Nate needed to feel comfortable that they were doing this for the right reasons and with the right motivations.

“Tell me three things you feel you did right today.”

He asked this one almost every time they were together, figuring that if Eliot had retreated so far into the darkness of his own thoughts that he couldn’t verbalize anything he’d done right they had no business continuing. Nate was half-convinced this would be one of those times, but to his surprise Eliot’s responses came easily.

“…and I didn’t put myself in a situation where I had to go to the hospital,” he finished, smirking.

“Smart ass,” Nate countered, his tone affectionate as he watched Eliot straighten up slightly – clearly pleased with himself. “Okay,” he went on, “now for the hard stuff. Are you ready to talk about what triggered you so badly?”

A small tremor, almost imperceptible in the lamplight, shivered across Eliot’s back and shoulders. “No sir,” he said softly.

Nate fell silent, considering the response and whether he wanted to push the issue. The fact that Eliot still couldn’t talk about what was going on in his head might be a problem, or it might be one of the dozens of issues they’d already encountered that he just needed Nate’s help bringing under control. “Ten strokes for not doing the responsible thing and taking yourself out of play,” he said finally. “No matter how good your reasoning sounded to yourself at the time, you were a liability to everyone today.”

He waited for a moment to see if Eliot would argue with him; only silence met him in return. “Ten for arguing with me when I tried to bench you, and pushing enough of my buttons to bring out all of my uglier traits for everyone to enjoy.”

That got him a smile, but Nate sobered immediately – the next statement tugging at a fear he hated living with. “Eliot, I need to know that you understand what it did to me today when we lost contact.” Reaching into the drawer, he pulled out a coiled length of thin strips of braided leather. “The idea that you might have died out there before we could reach you is something that keeps me up at night.” Closing the distance between them, he put a hand on Eliot’s chest – making sure that for this the hitter knew exactly where he was. “If you can swear to me you had nothing to do with the comm malfunctioning, you’ll take ten strokes for not immediately raising an alarm. If you can’t, it’ll be twenty.”

He hadn’t realized how heavy the idea was weighing on him that Eliot might have gone off-line on purpose, until he heard himself say the words. The relief that flooded through him at Eliot’s obvious surprise, and his immediate “No,” accompanied with a quick shake of his head, nearly brought tears to Nate’s eyes.

“All right then,” he said, flexing his fingers briefly against Eliot’s skin before stepping back and moving around behind him. “Let’s do this.”

Proper flogging technique, like most of the skills Nate had acquired since taking up with Eliot in this way, was something that required regular practice. He’d also spent hours reading up on each type of flogger and what it’s physical and emotional effect on the person being flogged was likely to be. Eliot’s surprised gasp at the first blow – accompanied by Nate calling out ‘one’ – was more satisfying than it probably should have been under the circumstances. Nate knew his hitter had been expecting him to use one of the heavier whips; it tended to be his preference, especially with evidence of the beating Eliot had taken still tattooed across his skin.

Instinct had driven him to the lash, however – it was thin, light, and he could wield it fast enough to sting with every blow. “Two!” He fell quickly into a rhythm once it became clear that Eliot approved of his choice.

It was a difficult balancing act – detaching himself enough that he could be in control, but not so much that he lost touch with his feelings for the man who trusted him enough to regularly put himself at Nate’s mercy like this. _I can’t lose you._ He hadn’t been lying when he told Eliot how frightened he’d been – Nate tried not to lie at all to Eliot, but definitely not here. Intellectually he understood that given the nature of the work he did and who Eliot was, the odds were Nate would be the one left grieving.

Emotionally, however, he couldn’t see how he would survive the loss. _You saved me,_ he thought, watching Eliot’s skin redden, aware of every shift and sound so that he could respond if something changed. _You put me back together and you saw me through – I don’t know anyone else who could have put up with me long enough to do that._ He smiled slightly. _I don’t know how you put up with me that long._

It was a difficult balancing act, and occasionally – for no particular reason at all – one of them would lose their footing. Nate realized too late that he’d put a hair too much power into his stroke. His heart leapt into his throat and seemed to lodge there, as the tip of the lash drew a bright crimson line across Eliot’s bruised flesh.  
*******************  
The cut was perfect – _exactly_ what his overtaxed psyche had been looking for. Eliot held his breath, whimpering low and soft in his throat as he waited to see what Nate would do next. Historically this was the moment where the mastermind would back off, more concerned about a little blood than doing what was necessary to take Eliot past all of the crap that had built up inside him over the years.

The most frustrating thing of all was that Eliot couldn’t even really be upset with him for it – Nate had already walked him farther down this road than he ever thought the former Jesuit would be comfortable doing, and Eliot loved him for that more than he had the words to express. If being with Nate meant that he never knew that moment of having his soul laid absolutely bare, it was a compromise Eliot was completely willing to make.

Enough time passed without movement or sound from the man at his back that Eliot’s brain automatically began to shift expectations towards what was coming next. Nate would finish the remaining strokes, but they would be nothing he couldn’t handle, nothing that would even test his limits, much less breach them…

The next stroke caught him completely unaware with how intense it was, carving a line of fire across his shoulders and wrenching a cry from his throat that was nearly loud enough to eclipse Nate’s call of “twenty-seven”. The remaining three blows followed in quick succession, expertly placed and as hard as any blow Nate had ever dared lay on him.

The first piece of him broke free under the final stroke of the lash, Nate’s “thirty” ringing in his ears. “More,” he begged as tears quickly soaked the length of cloth covering his eyes. “Nate, please…” Hope was shining wickedly bright in his heart that this time Nate would understand, that he would be willing to take Eliot past his limits, into a space where he might finally know some peace.

Another blow struck, but with no accompanying count this time. It was followed by another, then another. The next one struck the edge of the slice Nate had laid into his flesh, and that pain was hard and bright enough that Eliot began to sob. He lost track of the blows after that, but after a seeming eternity his body and mind finally let go.

Endorphins flooded his system, numbing the emotional as well as the physical pain, quieting his thoughts and fears, and sending him spiraling into a headspace where nothing mattered and his only responsibility was to exist.  
**********************  
He’d been working on gut instinct from the moment he saw the blood, and Nate couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so terrified. Not that he’d hurt Eliot physically – but that he’d crossed a line he had no business crossing and once the dust settled things would never be right between the two of them again. _”You’re not a bloody psychiatrist! You need to stop playing like you are before somebody really gets hurt!”_ Sophie’s earlier exhortation rang in Nate’s ears again as he watched Eliot shift from absolute emotional collapse into a stillness so perfect it was almost unnatural.

 _He’s floating._ Nate had studied the term in all the readings he’d done, but Eliot’s physical limits had always been so far afield that Nate could never envision being the one to take him to that point. _And yet, here we are._ Dropping the lash, he moved in closer – checking all of the younger man’s vitals and quietly assuring himself that Eliot was fine.

“I’m going to take the blindfold off,” he said – infusing his voice with far more calm than he actually felt. Reaching around from the front, he undid the knot in the cloth with faintly trembling fingers, waiting for some reaction from his hitter when the blindfold came away.

There was none. “Eliot, look at me,” Nate said gently, willing the younger man to make eye contact. It took several moments, but Nate felt a good portion of his own internal panic still when Eliot’s head finally shifted enough for their eyes to meet. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Eliot said, the word as soft as if he’d breathed it out. “Good.”

Nate nodded, letting a small, relieved smile soften his own expression. “Now that you have this space I want you to hold it for as long as you can,” he said. “I’m going to get you down, but you are not to try and help me.”

Eliot’s only response to that was an adorably goofy grin that Nate took to mean he understood.  
*************************  
He was safe for at least a little while; safe from the mistakes and the nightmares and all the responsibilities that had weighed his soul down for longer than he could remember. The process of Nate getting him free of the chains that had kept him on his feet jarred him somewhat back to reality, but not enough to rob him of the peace he’d found.

He drifted as Nate settled them both on the floor; wrapping his softest, biggest blanket around Eliot and pillowing the hitter’s head against his thigh. “You did good,” he murmured, carding his fingers through the sweat-soaked strands of Eliot’s hair. The gesture was soothing, and with a soft sigh, Eliot settled back into the quiet, peaceful place he’d found in his soul where there were no thoughts, no fears…only Nate, and him.


End file.
